Posted
by
Soulskill
on Wednesday May 07, 2014 @02:45PM
from the more-tools-more-power dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Game studios now seem to be forming a habit out of opening up their debugger / development utilities. After Valve's notable VOGL debugger, Crytek has now decided to open source their Renderdoc debugger. Renderdoc had been available for free use since earlier in the year but now they have posted an MIT-licensed version of the code to GitHub. Renderdoc builds on both Windows and Linux but for now just targets the Direct3D 11 graphics API while OpenGL support is being expected later."

I seriously doubt the AGPL is legally enforceable. It's a copyright license (so you can still use the software), not a "conveyance license", not to mention the output of a computer program isn't copyrightable.

Firstly, not being able to release in-house tools is a complete non-issue.

Secondly, if the programs are loosely coupled, the GPL, especially GPLv2, is very forgiving of proprietary code and GPLed code working together. You just have to mind your manners and know the rules. For the GPLv3, here are some basic rules from the GPL FAQ [gnu.org]:

For instance, if the program uses only simple fork and exec to invoke and communicate with plug-ins, then the plug-ins are separate programs, so the license of the plug-in makes no requirements about the main program.

If the program dynamically links plug-ins, but the communication between them is limited to invoking the ‘main’ function of the plug-in with some options and waiting for it to return, that is a borderline case.

Furthermore, the system library exception may prove useful sometimes as well, though that is less common.

In conclusion then, while there is a kernel of truth hiding very, very well

Working as intended. If you use something that is GPL, you have to be sure to give it back, usually for free. When your business model depends on not giving up the entirety of what you made for free, the GPL is dangerous. Now the GPL is by no means an insurmountable obstacle to building non-free-as-in-beer software, but you have to watch your step. This is intended and necessary for what the GPL tries to do. I *like* the GPL because it prevents my code from being supplanted by proprietary derivative code. I

Why does the MIT license bug people so much? If people want to share their modifications they can and will. If people don't want to share their modifications it's not like publishing the code under GPL would have convinced them to, they just wouldn't have used the code at all.

I've seen something like this before. It's very useful to a debugger, because it's easier to experience the world of code through visualisation.
Temporal-spacial debugging can indeed become an automated debugger in time, given the advances made in Artificial Intelligence...
We will have to wait and see...